After the PTO decided earlier this week not to include Kristian Blummenfelt’s record time in their list of fastest times on a Long Distance – and the criticism that came with this decision – it has now been decided to take the entire list offline. “Regarding the “Fastest Times” listed on the PTO World Rankings page, this page was simply added as an informational section, so those fans who love data can see historical comparisons and perhaps get an idea who might have been the fastest over the years in different disciplines and overall. It was never designed to have a “world record keeping” function. Our data expert at TriRating, Thorsten Radde, would make judgements to include or exclude certain races, so that the list might have meaningful comparisons, but it was never designed to pass judgement on ‘records’. Because the “Fastest Time” page is subject to misinterpretation and factors outside of our control and a listing of “world record” times is impossible to determine, we have eliminated the “Fastest Time” page from the PTO World Rankings website.”
In the press release that the PTO send out about this topic – which can be found here – it is made clear that they definitely appreciate Blummenfelt’s time and certainly count it as a great achievement. It also indicates that their point system will remain in effect. “What is in our control and what we will continue to list on the PTO World Rankings website is the “Highest Points” scored in races over the last ten years, as determined by the PTO World Rankings system. It can be found here (spoiler alert, for the men, Jan Frodeno has the four Highest Scoring races of all-time, followed by two by Patrick Lange. For the women, no surprise, the top six Highest Scoring races belong to Chrissie Wellington and Daniela Ryf).”
Still there were quite a few top professional athletes before who criticized the PTO’s point distribution. One of those athletes is Frederic Funk, who called the points allocation a ‘lottery’.
